I’m off to London tomorrow for a couple of days. It’s no use going with the Sage – he works out his appointments and books a ticket home at the earliest opportunity. So he will go up on Tuesday for his morning appointment, meet me at 1 o’clock to view a sale and then we’ll come home on the 2.30 train. I, on the other hand, will hope (this is British Rail, hope is the operative word) to get in at 10.24 on Monday, meet Martin and Wendz at the Wallace collection – I haven’t been there for years and years and there is, in addition, a loan exhibition from the Louvre at present. On Tuesday morning, I hope to go to the Russian loan exhibition at the Royal Academy. I’ll spend the night with El and Phil. I am prepared to be delighted.

With all the Tales of Yore I’ve been telling, you know nothing about the events of the week. One of the highlights was seeing two barn owls, within a minute of each other, flying in front of my car. Barn owls are so beautiful and one doesn’t see them that often – largely, of course, because they are nocturnal. This was at about 4.30 and the day was just drifting towards dusk.

At the time, I was on my way to Norwich to meet Ro and go to the cinema. We saw No Country for Old Men, the current Coen brothers’ film. We thought it was very good indeed, with some excellent performances and no duds, and some cracking dialogue. We were falling about with laughter (though it was very understated and dry, don’t expect wisecracks) between bloodbaths, and there was a truly disturbing villain, who started off appearing to be a psycopath and then turned out to be more complex than that, and with a worrying charm, on occasion. If you like the Coen brothers and you don’t mind a lot of nasty deaths, you’ll be fine. If you are a gentler soul, don’t go there. There was one scene (bullet being extracted from self) which I couldn’t watch, and I am not that squeamish.

Ooh, I’m watching television and Javier Bardem (the villain) just won a BAFTA. Well deserved, and I’d have said the same if Tommy Lee Jones (the sheriff) had won it.

We duly celebrated our 35th engagement anniversary last night, with fillet steak, spinach, fried potatoes, sprouting broccoli, parsnips, mushrooms and tomatoes, followed by pineapple (this being a pudding-free zone). I asked the butcher if he had fillet steak – “yes, but you might need a mortgage” he replied. “Money no object” I declared expansively. He’s waiting for our actual anniversary in May, as he hopes to retire on the proceeds.

Today, I ate cake. Jo was on coffee rota and she’d make one specially – what’s a girl to do? It was only polite – and delicious to boot. Afterwards, I couldn’t manage lunch (three months without cake and even a small slice is surprisingly filling), and ate rice cakes and plain yoghurt and only felt moderately wicked.

It was drizzling when we set off for Yorkshire, but the sun came out as we headed North and at some time we stopped for a while and canoodled in a field. We stayed in Settle, I think, that night. The next day, the Sage wanted to explore the local antique shops and he was pleased to find two Victorian vesta boxes – Americans might know them better as matchsafes – which he bought. He said I was bringing him luck already.

We’d got married on Thursday. On Saturday, he wondered, casually, if it’d be all right to go home by way of Bristol. Bristol is not, by any stretch of the imagination, on the way home to Lowestoft from Yorkshire. There was a picture he wanted to look at…

We set off, arrived in the area by late afternoon and started to look for a hotel. Late May, we didn’t think there would be a problem, but there wasn’t a room to be had. It seemed that the local Cider Festival was on and throngs of merry scrumpy-drinkers had converged on the West Country. However, as always, our luck was in. We stopped at a pretty little hotel by a stream and went in, rather hopelessly, to ask. The proprietor was dialling a number (phones still had dials then, it was before the era of keypads) and put the telephone receiver (phones still had receivers then, it was before the era of all-in-one telephone/keypads) down to speak to us. “I was just ringing the Tourist Board” he said. “I’ve got a single and a double room left – they were booked but the people haven’t turned up.” We took the double, of course, and were grateful – he reckoned that they were probably the last rooms left in the area as everywhere had been booked out for weeks.

Later, in the bar, an elderly chap was engaging people in conversation. He had a settled air to him, and it turned out that he was a permanent resident. We gained the impression from the hotelier that this was a mixed blessing…

The next day, we found the house where the elderly couple were selling the picture. The Sage wanted to buy it, and a price was agreed. They were very anxious to sell us another rather odd oil painting. It was of a sharp-faced old man sitting at a table, counting his piles of money. We didn’t really want it, but they were insistent, and the Sage offered a fiver. He was a bit embarrassed when they accepted it, but afterwards told me that he had hardly enough money left for petrol and couldn’t offer more (this was before the era of cashpoints and it was a Sunday when banks are closed).

We still had our wedding celebration party in August, and our Seychelles honeymoon afterwards. There were thirteen rupees to the pound, I remember, and the easiest way to convert was to think in units of one shilling and sixpence.

The only fly in the ointment was the prospect of this big wedding. It was so boring, having to plan guest lists, choose the invitation cards (engraved, obviously, darlings), think about a dress when I really wasn’t bothered about any of it. I wanted to be married, not to get married.

On a practical level, there wasn’t too much else to fuss about. The Sprout already had a house and my mother and I busied ourselves buying new towels and saucepans and the like. He and I chose a bed and a washing machine. We had enough money for what we needed – perfectly happy with passed-on part dinner services from family and that sort of thing, although my in-laws bought us a ‘best’ dinner service as a wedding present. My mother bought, from the Sprout (who was an auctioneer) a Victorian silver set of cutlery, which fortuitously came up for sale at the right time.

My heart was still not in this wedding nonsense. I wasn’t fussed about a church wedding, even a small private one would be too much for me. I really was very shy, but it’s not just that. I just hate a ceremony that revolves around me. I still do. I was looking forward to the party, just so long as it wasn’t called a wedding reception.

My mother was completely sympathetic. She said that, if we wanted to elope, she’d hold the ladder.

By the time three months had passed, the Sprout could see what we had meant. Every day there seemed to be more decisions to make. And now that he’d got his gorgeous new fiancée, he didn’t want to wait. Finally, he suggested we call off the wedding – and surprise everyone by turning up married. His parents were going on holiday to Scotland – wouldn’t it be fun to get married the day after they left and turn up at their hotel as a surprise.

No, I said, it wouldn’t. I was not going to start married life by upsetting my mother-in-law like that. We’d get married the day before they left and invite them.

And that’s just what we did. The Sprout got a licence – I had to show my birth certificate to prove I was over 18. I don’t know what his parents thought about the whole thing, but they turned up, smiling cheerfully. My mother came too of course, and they took her out to lunch afterwards. I apologised to my sister for not inviting her, but then I’d have had to ask the Sprout’s sister and family, and they would have made a fuss with confetti and photos and such nonsense, and I wasn’t having that.

I’d been to London, looking for clothes, but I couldn’t find a thing I liked. Then my mother and I went over to Great Yarmouth in search of something to wear. I bought a yellow and white mini-dress, with a big white collar, and a light coat – I wonder what colour écru is? It was not cream or beige or white, maybe it was écru. Both were very useful and I wore them for years. I suppose they are still in the attic somewhere, but probably rather eaten by mice. The dress, by the way, cost £5, which was cheap even for 1973.

After the wedding, the Sage* and I left for a weekend honeymoon in Yorkshire.

*You see, he earned his new title the moment he married me…

My mother took it well, although she would have been justified in asking us to wait. There had been a thirteen year age gap between her and my father, so she was not shocked by that, but I was only nineteen and we’d had an odd and unhappy three years since my father’s death, so it could well be thought that I was not in a good position to know my mind, let alone decide my entire future. However, she said how pleased she was, and the next morning, which was a Saturday, I went off to work at the town library.

I didn’t tell anyone. At lunchtime, the Sprout and I had arranged to meet in his office, which was five minutes walk away. He had been over to his parents’ house (which was here, where we now live) to tell them. He mentioned an engagement ring – would I like to choose one, or would I like a family ring? I said a family ring, and he produced a box from his pocket. In it was a beautiful diamond and sapphire ring, set in platinum. He placed it on my finger, and it fitted.

Afterwards, I went back to work. I didn’t say anything, but it wasn’t long before someone noticed and I became the centre of attention.

When we discussed a wedding date, I wanted to make it soon, and a small occasion. The Sprout was unsure. He thought it would be expected that we’d make a bit of a splash; his brother had got married in Australia a year or so earlier and not told anyone until afterwards, and he knew his mother had been disappointed. In the end, it was decided that we’d get married in August, with a reception at the Yacht Club and a honeymoon in the Seychelles.

Most of you will probably wonder why I did so blithely tumble into matrimony. I hadn’t had it on my mind at all, up until then. I’d have been quite horrified at the idea, in fact. But I hadn’t hesitated for a moment, and in the weeks that followed I had no doubts at all.

I’m sure my father’s death and subsequent disasters did have something to do with it – not that I was looking for a father-figure; I really don’t think that was it at all. It was more that it had jolted me out of my age group and I was quite impatient with adolescent interests. A Latin teacher, a year earlier, had said (regarding a Roman writer) “I’ve always liked Horace. They say that you have to be middle-aged to appreciate him, but I think I was born middle-aged.” I’ve blogged about this before – it gave me a shock of recognition, that your mental age group doesn’t necessarily reflect your age, and I found this reassuring and comforting when I felt out of kilter with people.

I’ve always made the most important decisions in life quickly and instinctively. As I said before, I knew the Sprout as a friend already. I’d had casual relationships – and knew that they were; there had been one chap I’d rather fallen for, but it was leading nowhere and I didn’t expect it to – and one more serious one; but I knew in my heart that we were only playing, as it were. When that finished (he finished it; his mother thought that I wasn’t a good influence, heh heh*) I wasn’t actually too bothered. Although he was four years older than me, he was a boy and I wasn’t a girl. The Sage was different. He was interesting, well-rounded, he knew a lot about a wide range of subjects, and could talk to anyone about anything. He wasn’t after a casual relationship and neither of us was the sort to waste time. We’re not impulsive, but we are both decisive when it matters, and cautious the rest of the time.

Marriage, though – you might wonder why we didn’t live together. Well, this was out of the question, for one thing. My mother and his parents would both have been horrified. My mother, for a start, would ask how much he actually loved me, if he didn’t want to marry me? And I would have too. I have high expectations. I want and expect to be adored, and that includes total commitment. And I’d found the man who met my expectations and I saw no point at all in waiting.

*Actually, she had a point. I was a bit reckless. A bit of an Ado Annie at heart – though don’t read too much into that. Head ruled heart, even if I was impulsive.

I’m jist a girl who cain’t say no,
I’m in a turrible fix.
I always say “come on, le’s go”
Jist when I orta say nix!
When a person tries to kiss a girl,
I know she orta give his face a smack.
But as soon as someone kisses me,
I somehow, sorta, wanta kiss him back!
I’m jist a fool when lights are low
I cain’t be prissy and quaint
I ain’t the type that can faint
How c’n I be whut I ain’t?
I cain’t say no!
Whut you goin’ to do when a feller gits flirty, and starts to talk purty?
Whut you goin’ to do?
S’posin’ ‘at he says ‘at yer lips’re like cherries, er roses, er berries?
Whut you goin’ to do?
S’posin’ ‘at he says ‘at you’re sweeter ‘n cream,
And he’s gotta have cream er die?
Whut you goin’ to do when he talks that way,
Spit in his eye?

*cough*

By the way, I don’t have an Oklahoma accent. Read this, please, in Received Pronunciation.

PS – I’ve changed this post several times, so if you get a previous one via a RSS feed, bear with me. And if you didn’t, don’t worry – you haven’t missed any spectacular revelations.

Righto. I’ve looked it up. And the magical evening was on Friday, 9th February, 1973.

It was awfully romantic*. There had been an exhibition on at Christie’s, the auctioneers, called Fanfare into Europe, in the middle of January. The Sage was going, with his friend Arthur, and asked if I’d like to go along too. The Sage (he was, at this stage, the Sprout) had become good friends with our family over the past three years – we met him very shortly after my father died. His father was our family solicitor and the Sprout had asked my father to propose him for membership of the Yacht Club, which he’d done. When daddy died, he called round to say how sorry he was, and we all took to each other. I was only sixteen at this point, and the Sprout was over thirty, so romance was not in the air.

But we went to the exhibition, and we hit it off. So, a couple of days later, the Sprout rang and asked if I’d like to go to London again. We did whatever he was there to do – probably viewed an auction – and called in at the shop of his lovely friends Norman and Barbara, in the Old Brompton Road. Norman was also a professional musician – apart from other things, he was Morecambe and Wise’s pianist, and he also played at the Ritz. Barbara told me afterwards that the Sprout had never brought a woman to meet them before, and they were very intrigued.

We still got on well, and the next thing, we went out for dinner. He held my hand in the car on the way home. I was enchanted. I soon realised that I was being wooed. Now, even in 1973, wooing didn’t really happen. He was older than former boyfriends and entirely more charming.

But I’m romantic with instinctive limits, you see. I’d not have taken this very seriously if I hadn’t already known, liked and trusted him.

So, this Friday night. There was an art gallery at Long Melford and an exhibition was being held and there was a picture he was interested in – not for himself, actually, for a friend, but the friend decided against the picture so we’ve still got it. We had dinner afterwards, and then drove home. We *cough* stopped in a layby to talk for a while, and the atmosphere became rather heady. We both knew what he was going to say, but he was very nervous.

He came to the point. “Will you…”

“Yes”

“Will you…”

“Yes”

“Will you marry me?”

Indeed, I said it a third time. He drove me home. I told my mother – it was well after midnight by this time, but she never went to sleep until I was back.

Okay, the rest tomorrow.

*well, no it wasn’t really

Sometime around now is the 35th anniversary of the Sage and my engagement. One of these years I really will work out the date. It’d be easy enough with an online everlasting calendar.

Val’s husband says they still haven’t diagnosed what’s wrong with her. She’s a little better but still in hospital. There are no staff holidays booked for the next six weeks so they’re all right in the shop at present, but he knows that the Sage is willing to help with deliveries, and I in the shop and he’s welcome to call on us. I don’t know whole lots about pet food, but it can’t be that hard and I can do tills and convert weights from pounds to kilos and that sort of thing.

Interviewing at the high school this morning, and it was one of those happy occasions when we looked at each other at the end and knew who was streets ahead of the rest. We’d hoped to make a second appointment (it was an internal appointment and her job wil be vacant), but no one was quite right to slot in, so at least the most important one was filled. When I went out to the car park, she was getting something out of her car and she thanked me – I assured her that it was absolutely on merit. In fact, after she answered one question, there was a pause until I realised everyone was looking at me to ask the next question – I was still pondering her excellent answer and had quite lost the thread.

After that, I babysat all day. Lunch and tea. And a visit to the playground, and a bounce on my bed and other childish pursuits. Most enjoyable. The children are fabulous. Squiffany says that I’m her favourite girl and when she’s grown up (bigger than mummy or daddy or grandpa) and I’m little (it seems that I’m due to be a shrunken old lady) she will look after me.

Ro and I are meeting in Norwich after he finishes work tomorrow to go to the cinema. This hardly seems worthy of note, but I haven’t been to see a film for about six months. The local theatre shows two films, each on one night, every week, and I must start going there. If I just start, I’d soon get into the habit.

It was a very windy night. The wind yowled down the bedroom chimney behind our bed. I couldn’t sleep. I dozed fitfully for a couple of hours, but then lay awake for a long time. By 4.30, I felt restless – and so did the Sage. The wind was keeping him awake too.

Restlessness is not a bad thing when you’re in bed with someone you’re rather keen on, with time to spare. We used it well. A good game of scrabble *cough* is splendid when you can’t sleep, and afterwards we relaxed and napped soundly for a couple of hours.

I admitted defeat at this morning’s meeting and didn’t even wait to be asked, but offered to carry on as chairman for another year. I really can’t bear to be coy and don’t play hard to get for the sake of it. This afternoon’s meeting was school governors and this evening’s (at least it’s social and not a committee) is the WI.

Of course, this means I’ll be out on Pancake Day. I offered to leave the batter for the Sage and Ro to make their pancakes, but they say it won’t be the same without me, and they’ll wait until tomorrow. We all take our share of cooking and tossing, so it’s not that they expect me to do the work. I think that’s rather sweet. It’s a good job we don’t observe Lent in a giving-up sort of way.

I went to a Roman Catholic school, you see, and I’ve always associated this sort of thing, like being marked on the forehead with ash on Ash Wednesday, with over-the-top, heart-on-sleeve religiosity. I’m not saying it is, please understand, it’s just an instinctive prejudice that results from 13 years in a convent school. I don’t see the point in giving something up just for the sake of it – I mean, if you give up chocolate and then are pleased that you’ve lost weight, it’s a benefit not a sacrifice. One year I did make the effort to do some positive ‘good’ thing every day, which was arguably worthwhile – but then, if it’s so good, why wait for Lent? And I’ve already given up chocolate, biscuits, cake etc and frankly it hasn’t hurt.

Mind you, today I thought I’d have to give up lunch, and that did hurt. I had put a packet of rice cakes and a banana in a bag, but then left it at home. Fortunately, the governors had had a sandwich lunch because they were being shown round the Skills Centre before the meeting (I’d already had a conducted tour) and there were a few left. There’s always splendid nosh at WI, so I have left fish for the Sage and Ro and just had a glass of wine myself. And a couple of rice cakes, of course.

Apologies to all for the vulgarity of this post’s title. But hey, would you have resisted?

Last week, Val from the pet shop collapsed at work – a considerate employer, she warned her assistant that she suddenly had an awful pain and might faint, and promptly did so. She’s been in hospital ever since and she’s on morphine for the pain. The Sage went in to ask her husband how she is, and he’s very anxious. For her right now of course, but also about the shop. She’s been told she won’t be able to come back to work for three months.

They have two shops and run one each, and she does all the paperwork for both.

He has no idea how he’ll manage. I suspect that Val will have to start paperwork as soon as she’s able to sit up. No rest for the self-employed – even if they are insured against sickness, it’s the books and the ordering that only she knows how to do.

You’ll notice that there’s a suitably dull title for the post. I have taken Dave’s just criticism to heart.

It was cold and windy this morning and i didn’t cycle in for the papers. I wonder if this demonstrates simple common sense or a slip into laziness. I don’t care a lot, I only wonder. In the 15 minutes I saved – no, I drove in instead, so I only saved about 8 minutes – I wrote up some notes I had said I’d take along to the church this morning, so I didn’t waste time in fun or jollities. Fool.

A friend gave me a present. A rather attractive rosewood pen in a matching box. Isn’t that adorable of him? It is the friend I went out with last Sunday, when he bought late Christmas presents for all his grandchildren. He said he had enjoyed the day so much and his new stick was his memento and this is mine. I’m a bit embarrassed – after all, he took me out, which was my treat – but charmed too, of course.

I think I mentioned that the Sage has been visiting a friend in hospital. Yesterday, he asked me to go with him to her house, as he was concerned that stuff in her fridge was going off after more than a week. Indeed, a lot of it had and I chucked it. Assuming she becomes well enough to return in the near future, it’ll be more help to her to replace it with some home-cooked meals to save her having to think about food for a bit. She has a couple of cats which come in and out of the house but sleep in the barn – Dolly, the tamer one, came in and was very anxious to be cuddled. I really rather fell for her and was reluctant to leave her. Of course, if it were a dog, someone would have had to take her in at once, but it’s not so easy with a cat. Tilly would be all right (vastly jealous, but she’s well-mannered), but she’d not know her way around and might stray and, being used to being outside most of the time, she’d hate to be kept in. Neighbours go in night and morning and so does the Sage, and they make a fuss of her then. The Sage is also looking after the chickens. He takes them warm oatmeal porridge on these cold mornings. They love it. One fluttered up onto his shoulder this morning.

The cottage is in a lovely location, but it’s really off the road. There’s a shared drive, which then divides into two leading to her neighbour and her own house. Very quiet, with fields all around – and three miles of rather poor road into town. Easy to be cut off in poor weather and she knows she’ll have to give up driving soon – she was planning that before she became ill. She’s lived in that house for 60 years, since she married. She never had children – she loved her dairy cows and said the calves were her children. They lived a natural life-span, up to thirty years as she cared for them so well. Very different from dairy farms nowadays.

The phone rang! Ring, ring, ring!!(!)

No one had remembered to tell us until this morning that tonight was to be the Denton Annual Quiz. We were not in the least deterred by the realisation (hmm) that we had been completely overlooked, but acknowledged that, as it’s a Saturday night, obviously we were all free and said we’d go.

I went to ask Ro if he would like to come. He was working on his computer. It was actual techie sort of stuff, I didn’t understand anything written on the screen. He said he had work to do so he wouldn’t come. In that case, I said, would he babysit? I outsmarted him there, I think…

We didn’t do as well as usual, coming about half-way down the field, but maybe they have been practising. Last year we came second. Mind you, we were the only other team of four, the others all had at least six. We found we didn’t mind. The drinks are splendidly cheap there. A pint of lager, a pint of proper beer, a J2O and a Bacardi Breezer came to £5.50.